Someone Else's Doctor
by Rabid Badger
Summary: Jack Harkness, working for Torchwood 3 in the mid 1980s, meets an alien who could care less about taking over the world and a Doctor that isn't his.


**Someone Else's Doctor**

It was Annie who raised the alarm. "Colin, you might want to come have a look at this."

Colin Bentley, currently Acting Director of Torchwood Three, had been enjoying a rare moment of downtime with Jack Harkness, drinking whiskey in his office. While drinking on the job was officially frowned upon in the Torchwood Charter, Colin felt that, given what they'd been through in the last week, they all deserved a good stiff drink. And possibly some time off.

Sighing, he hefted his not inconsiderable bulk out of his chair and started for the door. "Want to come with me?"

Jack, who for reasons Colin had never quite been able to fathom, didn't drink anything harder than soda water, nodded. "I don't suppose we could be lucky and have it be something harmless, like a Gryphon."

Colin winced. "The Gryphon was hardly harmless, Jack."

"Well of course she wasn't. If you'd just listened to me…"

Colin waved the rest of the explanation away, mostly because he knew Jack was right. If they'd listened to him, they would've realized the Gryphon was only searching for her egg, which had been stolen by some idiot who'd found it in his yard and thought it was a diamond. By the time it was all sorted out, both the idiot, the Gryphon, and Lita Fejali were dead.

The baby Gryphon had died a few days after it hatched. Jack said it starved to death.

The came up behind Annie's monitoring station. "And what new alien horror has come to destroy Cardiff today, Annie dear?"

She shot a withering glare at Colin. "It's not a horror. It is alien, though." She punched a button, and the picture on the scanner came into sharper focus.

Colin snorted. "It's a school boy feeding the ducks."

"Except it isn't." Dr. Hartnell came over holding a sheaf of papers. "According to Annie's scan, he's humanoid, but definitely not human." He handed the papers to his boss. "Body temperature a couple degrees higher than human. The way he carries himself suggests he either comes from a planet with marginally lower gravity than Earth, or he's spent significant time in space. Brain activity is similar to human, but there are variations that suggest higher levels of functioning in certain areas."

Colin ignored the fact that Jack was reading over his shoulder. "Does he correspond to any known humanoid aliens in the database?"

"Only several hundred thousand." Annie snorted. "The outfit's Earth-made, though."

"So we've got a humanoid alien in a boy's school uniform feeding the ducks." Jack mused. "Has he shown any signs of hostility towards the ducks?"

Colin sighed. "How long's he been there?"

"Going on about a half-hour."

"Have you seen anyone else?"

She shook her head. " He just came wandering into monitor range with a bag of rolls and started feeding the ducks."

"Well," Jack said, after a moment's silence. "You want me to go check him out, Col? One alien to another?"

Colin shook his head, though whether he meant yes or was simply despairing over sending Jack to make first contact with anyone, Annie and Dr. Hartnell couldn't tell. "Just try not to start any international incidents."

Jack went over to where his great coat was slung over an open locker. "Colin, Colin, Colin. You need to learn to let go of these things."

"Says the man who almost ignited an interplanetary war between Earth and Valtrovia."

"How was I supposed to know all six of them were her wives?" He heard someone (probably Annie) snickering. "Look, I'll make sure he doesn't have any plans for World Conquest, okay?"

Before Colin could get a word in, he'd already disappeared through the cog door, the alarm shrilling.

"Keep an eye on him," he told Annie. "If he looks like he's even THINKING of doing anything inappropriate, send Rajeem to retrieve him, okay?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. I'll be in my office." He shoved Dr. Hartnell's papers back into his hand and retreated to his sanctum

"Game for a bet?" Dr. Hartnell said, watching the view-screen with interest.

Annie looked up at him and smiled. "What are we betting on, Will?"

"How long it takes for Harkness to try and seduce him?"

She considered it a moment. "Done." They shook hands. "Don't you think it's kind of odd, though?"

"What's odd?"

"Why would an alien be wearing a British boy's school uniform?"  
Jack nodded at Rajeem as he pushed the door to the Tourist Office open. Unbeknownst to them, he'd been wondering the same thing. Maybe if he could get the kid to turn around, Annie could access the database and see what school his tie came from.

The streets weren't that busy, it being a workday, and what few people passed the boy didn't pay him any notice. Nor he them; he seemed totally engrossed in feeding the ducks, who were quacking noisily, waiting for him to toss the next piece of bread.

Jack sidled up next to him, wondering where he came from and what he was doing on Earth dressed in that outfit. As casually as possible, he leaned against the rail, leaving just enough room between them to not make it seem as if he were invading his personal space (a hard call to make even for Jack, since there were species out there for whom personal space for anyone outside their own race was several miles). "Hi."

The boy didn't even deign to look at him, just grunted something that might have been 'Hello,' and threw another roll to the ducks.

Ah. The strong silent type. "So? You alone or traveling with friends?"

The boy turned to look at him, and Jack sucked in an involuntary breath. Oh yeah, definitely alien. Dark red hair, pale skin with a dash of freckles across his nose, high cheekbones, and a look of complete and utter disdain. Medium height, rather thin, actually, until you looked closer and realized all those sharp angles masked a wiry musculature.

Jack knew a combat-trained veteran when he saw one, and he was definitely looking at one now. He might look like a boy, but he was most definitely a man.

Evidently, the close scrutiny was making him nervous; he was fiddling with his tie. "Let me guess." A definite British accent (boarding school, but with a lilt to it he couldn't quite place). Which made sense; if he'd been here for any length of time, he would've learned English. "The ducks can only be fed between the hours of two and four on alternate Tuesdays?"

Jack laughed, which brought what might have been the ghost of a smile to the young man's lips. "You have problems with rules and regulations?"

"Rules and regulations are fine, as long as they make some sort of sense." He realized then that, all the while he'd been studying the boy, the boy had been studying him. "You're not from around here either, are you?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Oh, please. As if one alien can't spot another? Though I'll admit, you've done an excellent job of blending in. Something I've never quite been able to achieve, I'm afraid."

"It's the hair," Jack said. "The only place you'll find hair that color on Earth is inside a bottle."

Another small quirk of the lips. Jack wondered if the kid knew _how_ to smile? "So. I take it you're not here to inquire about the state of my health or the authenticity of my hair color."

_Suspicious little bastard_. Jack felt a certain admiration for him_. _

"You're not from UNIT are you?" He was frowning now, his attention fully on Jack.

"UNIT?"

The boy rolled his eyes. "Can we drop the stupid 'I'm just a tourist here' act?" You're obviously an alien, I'm obviously an alien. From what I've been told, the only interest one alien might have in another in this blasted place is if they work for UNIT."

Jack was genuinely intrigued now. "How do you know about UNIT?"

"The Doctor told me."

For one awful second, Jack felt as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. Time slowed down to a crawl, and all he was aware of was those two words he'd waited so long to hear. The Doctor. The Doctor was here in Cardiff.

When he came back to reality, it was to find him self slumped against the pier railing, the boy squatted next to him, ginger eyebrows drawn together. "Are you okay?"

Jack grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him forward till they were nose-to-nose. "This Doctor. What's he look like?"

The young man's confusion was obvious. "You know The Doctor?"

"Jack shook him, hard. "What. Does. He. Look. Like."

Carefully, the young man removed the hands from his jacket. "Slightly taller than me, blond, wears a ridiculous cricket outfit and a white Panama hat."

Jack leaned his head back against the railing and closed his eyes. "Not mine, then." He opened his eyes and looked at the boy. "He travels in a TARDIS though, right?"

"Yes." The young man was still regarding him warily. "But what do you mean, not yours. You've traveled with him too?"

Jack laughed bitterly. "I did. Well, I will, eventually. But something happened, and we got separated. He'd told me about the space-time rift that runs through Cardiff, that he can use it to refuel the TARDIS, and I've been here every since. Waiting for him to come back and fix me."

"Fix you?"

"Like I said, something happened. I don't know what. We were in a battle with the Daleks, and I got shot, and I died. I know I died." He looked at the young man. "Except I didn't. I came back to life on an abandoned space station, the TARDIS was gone, and I can't die." He realized he was perilously close to tears. It had been years since he'd trusted anyone enough to tell them what had happened, and here he was babbling his life story to an alien in a schoolboy uniform.

An alien who was traveling with a Doctor that wasn't his.

To his everlasting surprise, the young man offered him a spotless white handkerchief. "You can't die?" Jack could hear the skepticism in his voice.

"No."

"And you've been waiting all this time for The Doctor, Your Doctor, to come back and fix you?"

"Fix me, explain to me why I'm like this. Hell, I'd settle for him killing me. I just need to know what happened. Why did he leave me like that? You understand that don't you…" he trailed off, realizing he had no idea what the young man's name was.

'Turlough," he said softly. "Vislor Turlough. And yes, I understand."

They ended up sitting side-by-side against the railing.

"The Doctor doesn't just abandon people." The firm conviction in Turlough's voice would have made Jack laugh, if he hadn't once been that young and certain. "You really can't die?"

'Oh I can die; it just doesn't take. I always come back."

"Does it hurt?"

"Like hell."

Turlough shuddered. "I used to think I wanted to die, before The Doctor rescued me."

"Rescued you?"

He was fiddling with his tie again. "I'm a political exile. Ended up on the wrong side of the revolution. Once they were done torturing me for information I didn't have and publicly humiliating me with a sham trial, they shipped me off here."

"To a British boys school?"

"It's a common practice amongst my people. Exiling political prisoners to backwater planets. Earth's there favorite."

Jack sighed. "Yeah, we've had trouble with that. Managed to negotiate treaties with a few planets to stop doing it, but I gather yours isn't one of them."

"And who's we?"

'Torchwood."

"Not UNIT?"

"Torchwood is a little less likely to shoot first and ask questions later." _Sometimes_. "Believe it or not, we were actually founded to keep an eye out for The Doctor. Though in our case, it's evolved over the years into keeping an eye on the rift."

"So there's more than one of you?

"Four of us. Well, there was four of us. I'm with Torchwood Three. Torchwood Two is a weird little guy in an office in Scotland. Torchwood four disappeared while back, but we figure it'll turn up any day now. It's Torchwood One you want to watch out for."

"Why?"

"Because if they were to get their hands on you, The Doctor or The TARDIS, they'd be dissecting all three of you to see what makes you tick. And using the TARDIS' time travel capability to recreate the Great and Glorious British Empire upon which the sun would never set."

"I detect a hint of bitterness there."

"I worked for them for a while after I ended up on Earth. Their favorite thing to do was come up with new ways to kill me, then see how long it took me to come back to life."

"But why would they want to hurt the Doctor. Didn't he used to work for UNIT back in the 70s?"

"Yeah, and how they kept Torchwood One from finding out about that I'll never know."

"Probably the Brigadier."

"You know Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart?"

Turlough laughed. "He was a teacher at that wretched school they sent me to." He was fiddling with his tie again, and Jack had this feeling he was about to make a confession of his own. "Originally, I was supposed to kill him, you know."

"The Brigadier?"

Turlough favored him with a withering glare. "The Doctor. One of his enemies contacted me; he knew how desperate I was to get off Earth. He promised to get me free if I killed the Doctor. Thing is, I didn't know anything about him. The Black Guardian told me he was evil. And I wanted so badly to get away from Earth. I'd been stuck here for close to ten years at that point, and there were days I thought I'd go mad just from having to put up with the idiots around me."

"But you didn't kill him."

"Not once I found out what he was truly like. The Black Guardian lied to me, of course. Told me what I wanted to hear." He looked at Jack, eyes bleak. "He wouldn't have been the first innocent man I'd killed."

"So what stopped you?"

A shrug of one thin shoulder. "I realized the Black Guardian was trying to get me to do his dirty work; he couldn't touch The Doctor himself. And The Doctor trusted me. He actually took me on board the TARDIS with him. I'm fairly sure now he knew the truth all the time and just wanted to give me a chance to prove I was better than I believed I was. You know, I gave up Enlightenment for him?"

"Enlightenment?"

"The ability to know and see all things. Faced with the choice, I realized I didn't deserve it. No one did. So I turned it down, which broke my contract with the Black Guardian."

"And he let you stay." Jack smiled. "That sounds like my Doctor."

"Aren't they all the same, really?" Turlough looked thoughtful. "I've met several other of his incarnations while traveling with him, and while they all look different, underneath it all, they're still the same man. Or Time Lord, I suppose."

"I envy you. I only got to meet one of him, and only for a very short time. How long have you been with him?"

"Who can tell? I'm fairly sure we've crossed timelines often enough I'm old enough to be my own grandsire by now."

"Great-grandsire, actually, but who's keeping track?"

Jack's head snapped up at the same time Turlough said "Took you long enough."

The young blond man in the cricket blazer gave a sheepish smile. "Took a bit longer than I thought it would." He glanced at Jack curiously. "I see you've made a new friend."

Jack was on his feet in a moment. "Captain Jack Harkness."

The Doctor was studying him in a way Jack was only too familiar with. "You're not with UNIT, are you?" Because if you are, tell them I have no interest in coming back to work for them."

"He's part of something called Torchwood." Turlough offered helpfully. Jack couldn't help but notice how, now that the Doctor was here, Turlough gravitated to his side like a compass towards magnetic North.

"Torchwood." The Doctor looked thoughtful. "I feel like I ought to know what that means, but it keeps slipping away from me."

Jack smiled. "Just stay away from London and you'll be fine."

"The Doctor smiled back, and despite the blond hair and soft blue eyes and the ridiculous cricketing outfit, Jack would've recognized that smile anywhere. "I'll keep that in mind." He turned to Turlough. "Ready to go, then?"

The young man nodded, then turned to Jack and held out a hand. "It's been nice talking to you, Captain Harkness." His grip was firm, and Jack could read the meaning behind the smile in those blue eyes. _Your secret's safe with me._

Jack nodded. "A pleasure meeting both of you. Particularly you, Doctor. I've heard a lot about you."

"All of it rubbish, I imagine." That smile again, and oh, Jack wanted to fall to his knees and beg this Doctor, Turlough's Doctor, to take him far away from Cardiff, and the rift, and Collin Bloody Bentley.

Instead he simply nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and watched as the two of them walked away, talking animatedly about something he'd never be a part of. Just before they turned the corner, the Doctor threw a matey arm around Turlough's shoulders, and Jack couldn't miss the way the young man leaned into it.

"Good-bye, Doctor," he whispered. "Until we meet again." They would, he told himself. They had to. If Turlough's Doctor was here now, that meant His Doctor was still out there somewhere. Some day, he and Rose would come back for him. And the last 150+ years, all the times he'd died…none of it would mean anything. The Doctor would fix him, and take him back into space.

It would happen. He knew it would.

Because the alternative was unthinkable.


End file.
